Hand Grenade

Long Island Iced Tea

A Long Island Iced Tea is five 15ml pours, vodka, blanco tequila, white rum, gin and Cointreau, with 25ml fresh lemon juice and 30ml sugar syrup, built over ice in a highball and finished with a short cola float. That is the International Bartenders Association specification. The IBA says to top with cola; we measure it at 30ml. The cola gives it the colour of iced tea. There is no tea in it. It is strong: about 3.0 UK units, three 25ml pub singles in one glass, behind a drink that tastes of lemon and cola. It goes wrong in three ways, usually together: free-poured spirits, sour mix instead of fresh lemon, and cola poured in by the can rather than floated. The AMF, the Grateful Dead, the Texas Tea and the Tokyo Iced Tea are all built on it.

Hurricane

A Hurricane is 60ml of dark rum, 60ml of white rum, 45ml of passion fruit syrup, 30ml each of fresh lime and orange juice, and 15ml each of grenadine and simple syrup, shaken hard and strained over crushed ice in a hurricane glass. Garnish with orange and a cherry. At about 4.8 UK units it is a strong drink, a third of a week’s guideline in a single glass. The Hurricane most people know is Pat O’Brien’s, the New Orleans bar, where the Oxford Companion says it was introduced and head bartender Louis Culligan is credited with creating it. Difford’s Guide thinks it originated in 1939 at The Hurricane Bar in New York. The usual account is O’Brien’s own: during the Second World War whisky was only available to a bar that bought large amounts of rum, and the drink was a way to use it, served in a glass shaped like a hurricane lantern. Premixed versions later became the standard serve in the city. Made with fresh juice and a passion fruit syrup with real fruit in it, the Hurricane is a tart, balanced rum punch.

Navy Grog

A Navy Grog is 30ml each of dark, aged and white rum, 22.5ml each of fresh lime and white grapefruit juice and 30ml of honey syrup, shaken hard for 10 to 12 seconds and strained into a double rocks glass around an ice cone, then topped with 60ml of soda water and drunk through the straw frozen into the cone. About 3.6 UK units. Donn Beach created it at Don the Beachcomber in Hollywood, and an early menu dedicated it to the gallant men of the American navy. The name reaches back to the Royal Navy: in 1740 Admiral Edward Vernon ordered his sailors’ rum ration mixed with water, and the mixture took his nickname, Old Grogram, from the grogram coat he reportedly wore, by the Oxford Companion’s account. Three rums give it a depth one bottle cannot, and grapefruit and honey keep it drier than most tiki drinks. The ice cone is the theatre, and it keeps the glass very cold.

Painkiller

A Painkiller is 60ml of Pusser’s Rum, 120ml of pineapple juice, 30ml of fresh orange juice and 30ml of cream of coconut, given a hard 10 to 12 second shake and strained onto cubed ice in a tiki mug or a big glass, with fresh nutmeg grated on top. About 2.4 UK units. Cream of coconut is coconut and sugar, usually with no dairy, but check the label. The name belongs to Pusser’s. Pusser’s prints the name with the registered symbol on its own Painkiller page, and the Oxford Companion says the company owns the trademark for the Pusser’s Painkiller cocktail. The recipe here is its own: four parts pineapple, one of cream of coconut and one of orange, with Pusser’s to suit. Difford’s Guide says it trademarked the name in the United States and the UK in 2003 and in 2010 forced a New York bar called Painkiller to rename itself PKNY. Pusser’s traces the drink to Daphne Henderson’s Soggy Dollar Bar on Jost Van Dyke, in the British Virgin Islands.